Pst! May I interest you in some Orchestrator?
So, we were up to quite a lot lately. A lot. We reduced the configuration effort of unattended setups, we re-branded our Tasks feature, added built-in support for blob storage. Introduced personal workspaces for all Studio users out-there (we see you, yes we do). Plus a couple of other very-cool-really-not-bragging things. You can have fun with all of these on https://platform.uipath.com/. Here’s what you need to know:
Modern Folders Unattended Setup
In 2019.10 and 2018.3 we brought to you a couple of features to help decrease the deployment effort of attended environments in Orchestrator. We’re talking about robot auto-provisioning, floating robots and machine templates. We now fully brought our solution to maturity, by turning our attention to our unattended offering.
Features previously available in attended scenarios only, are now valid for unattended as well.
- Machine templates take over the necessity of defining a cartesian product between the sets of users and machines, in the sense that an environment with 8 users and 8 VDIs needs a configuration with one machine template and 8 robots, instead of creating 64 robots for each possible combination between the two 8-sets.
- Add robot auto-provisioning to that and do the math. 8 users with automatic robot creation enabled, one machine template and that’s your setup. Attach the users and machine template to whatever modern folder has the processes to be executed, and you are good to go.
I would say it’s easy breezy, but you might find it difficult at first. Just give it a try, it’s truly awesome.
Action Center
The Tasks feature has been treated to a major overhaul. It is now called Action Center, with actions instead of tasks working as the operational units of the center. Don’t worry, the functionality itself stays the same. Well kind of. We introduced a new type of action, and guys, it is da bomb!
So, what happened is, we thought it would be a great idea to integrate Validation Station with our new re-branded Action Center, and we did it.
What does it mean?
Well, to ensure no waste in terms of resources consumption while waiting for a long-running process completion, whenever user input is required in regard to reviewing and correcting document classification and automatic data extraction results, a Document Validation action is generated.
This action is to be acted upon by the user to whom it’s assigned. During the time the action is pending completion, no robot is held hostage. They can be used to execute different processes just like that.
Upon completion of the Document Validation action, the initial workflow is resumed on whatever robot is available. See here details.
Storage Buckets
Orchestrator now brings you built-in support for blob storage, using the Orchestrator database or external providers (I.e. Azure, Amazon, MinIO). These Storage Buckets are folder-scoped entities, enabling you to maintain fine-grained control over access to and use of the storage and its contents.
Personal Workspace
Make life easier for your Studio users and yourself by enabling the creation of a Personal Workspace in Orchestrator for each user. They can then publish their packages directly to this separate space, where a process is automatically created or updated, and launch their automation quickly and easily from the tray.
Jobs Priority
We’ve also added the Jobs Priority feature y’all have been waiting for. You can now better control which job has precedence over other competing jobs. Higher priority jobs get the resources first and are executed before lower priority ones. Jobs with the same priority get executed in the order they’ve been created. That’s it. Have fun!
Processes Display Name
We also made sure that, from now on, users are able to conveniently change the display name of a process. This is for all of you out-there republishing packages and recreating the processes because of a typo. We finally did it! 10/10!
Package and Workflow Compare
The Package Explorer feature got richer with compare functionalities. It now empowers you to see the actual differences between any two selected versions of a package, pointing out workflow files that were added, modified, or deleted, and highlighting changes in folders or the dependencies list. Use the filters to see what interests you the most.
As a bonus, you can view the differences between workflow files. Compare the two selected versions of the .xaml file side by side, earliest file version on the left, with deleted content highlighted in red, modified content in yellow, and added content in green.
For more details about the incoming 20.4 version, see our release preview changelog here:
